Let's face it: there's still a certain amount of racism in human beings, so that shows up in Hollywood.
— James Gunn
That is who my people are - the oddballs, the rebels, and the geeks. That's what I am, so it's what I naturally feel connected to.
I'm in favor of anything that will give strong women more visibility in popular culture.
My favorite dark comedy, which is also one of my favorite films of all time, is 'After Hours.' I've seen 'After Hours' as much as almost any film I've ever seen in my life; I've watched it dozens of times, and I still watch it once a year. I still get a thrill out of it every time I see it.
I'm a huge Howard the Duck fan. For people who don't know, I'm a huge Marvel Comics fan, but Howard the Duck was maybe my favorite character as a kid. I went back, and I collected all of those comics. I had every comic he was ever in.
When you're on an independent film, you have a lot of great people there who are telling really true and authentic stories. But you also have a lot of con artists and people who think they can do something that they can't.
I've been making movies a long time. I'm a professional at it. I'm not a professional at making soundtracks - that's not my job. My job is to put the right songs in the movie so the movie works the best it possibly can.
Money doesn't buy happiness, but it does buy happier.
I guess I am an optimist in a pessimist brain, if that makes any sense. I believe in the innate goodness of most people in this world, and yet I'm a damaged soul like many other people and have my own demons and things I struggle with.
I am not into this old-school way of doing things, where you kill characters, and you bring them back, and then you kill them again, and then you bring them back, and their deaths mean nothing.
I made 'Super' for $3 million, and that was filmed in 24 days. And that $3 million dollars went to a lot of things other than what shows up on screen. Once you get done with the unions and everything else, that's just, like, the basic cost of what you can make a movie for.
Writing a comic book series, you're so reliant on whoever the artist is. It truly is collaboration.
I love shooting movies. I love the shots. That's the thing that I love doing, and I've just never been able to do it.
For me, I'm always hard on myself no matter what, so that's always a thing I have to deal with on a daily basis.
I don't think through anything I do. I just do it, and it's oftentimes landed me in huge amounts of trouble.
I was the kid in the neighborhood that was directing everyone else. I was director from the time I was a child.
One of the things that we've tried to do with the 'Guardians' films is to allow the women to be full characters.
I love raccoons. I had a raccoon figurine collection as a kid, and I now have two movies with 'Ranger Rick' jokes in them. I love 'em. They come in my back yard all the time, and we just stare at each other like a couple of idiots.
The majority of my life is 'Guardians,' but being able to clean my brain a little bit by doing something totally different like 'Belko' was incredibly helpful to the creative process.
I'm the luckiest guy in the world. I got to direct a movie involving three of my favorite things in the world: space operas, Marvel superheroes and raccoons.
'Monty Python And The Holy Grail' is a hugely important movie to me. I remember watching it for the first time on cable when I was about 13 years old.
For the theatrical experience to survive, spectacle films need to expand their definition of what they can be. They need to be unique and true voices of the filmmakers behind them. They can't just be copying what came before them.
Let me tell you one thing: there is no more cutthroat place to be than an independent film. Disney is a cakewalk after that - that is no lie.
Maybe it's the feminine side of me, but I like that AM radio pop.
I'm a little bit twisted, so what makes me laugh the hardest doesn't necessarily make other people laugh.
I think that one of the things that drives me in telling stories, and art in general, is finding the beautiful in a big mass of ugly.
'Belko Experiment' was the harshest, most extreme movie I ever made. But I still think there's a very cohesive center to it that wasn't always in my early films. And that isn't necessarily a bad thing. But I think it's a commercial thing.
The truth is that I didn't start out making commercial movies. My films were not film festival movies with the possible exception slightly of 'Super,' but I was able to nurture my gifts through the works of artists making lower budget films that needed a place and an outlet.
When I write a screenplay - and I think it's one of the reasons why it was frustrating for me just to be a screenwriter - I'm not thinking of it in terms of words on a page; I'm thinking in terms of visual images - basically, a comic book. I'm thinking of it in a series of shots.
When 'Blade Runner' came out, and especially, even actually when 'Alien' came out, it kind of changed how all science fiction movies were designed after that. And that was a really great thing. Now we're watching a lot of movies that are Xeroxes of Xeroxes of Xeroxes of Xeroxes of 'Blade Runner.'
A lot of people die in my movies. So if you're in a few of my movies, you have a good chance of dying!
I have to say, I feel a weird sort of calling in filmmaking that I didn't feel with other things. I feel like there are things in life you want to do, and then things you are called to do, and hopefully you can allow yourself to want to do whatever you're called to do.
I think of the Avengers as The Beatles, and the Guardians are the Rolling Stones. That is really how I feel about the groups.
I've come to trust that what I like is what works.
I was as huge Spider-Man fan as a kid, but I really liked The Defenders a lot. I was also a big Moon Knight fan for some reason.
It's great being a producer! Why am I wasting my career writing and directing? Those are actual jobs in which you work. Being a producer, it's kind of like you just go to the set, yell at a couple of people, and then stay up all night dancing in nightclubs.
I like to be able to feel as many parts of myself while watching a movie at one time. I think that's what 'Super' is - it's funny, but it's also sad. It's very touching in certain ways, and it's also got a very dark sense of humor. So it's allowed to go anywhere.
I am loath to suggest 'Visitor Q' to anyone, because you've got to have a warped brain to even understand or appreciate it a little bit. Fortunately, or unfortunately, I have been blessed with a warped brain, and I really dug it.
I would never want to take on a sequel of someone else's stuff unless I was totally reinventing it.
I don't have anything against corporate America. I mean, I guess there's something about living in a capitalist society that can get kind of terrifying at times.
Scooby's the greatest cartoon character ever. He isn't cute like Mickey or smart like Bugs or fearless like Woody and Buzz - he's a talking dog who's more human than I am. It's his humanity and imperfections that make him special.
I can't be told life is beautiful through a normal positive thinking book or a Hallmark movie; that language doesn't work for me.
It's hard making a movie because it's like... you lose your life. I mean, really, I like being alive; I like having friends, going out, watching other people's movies, and all these things I can't do for a year while I make a movie.
Definitely, 'True Detective' was a great example of one director, one story. It worked fantastically well. Well, I thought it worked fantastically well; I know a lot people didn't.
In a way, metafiction breaks down the story and makes it less real. But in another respect, by that very breaking down, it actually makes things feel more real than they would to begin with.
When I was a small child, I partially learned to read with comics, in particular with 'Scamp,' about the Lady and the Tramp's male child. That was the prime comic that made me fall in love with comics as a kid.
If I get a gig or I don't get a gig, I really have never, ever, ever cared.
The movies I like watching the most are these sort of cinema verite, handheld films where you really get gritty with people. But I also have this strange affinity for old Rock Hudson/Doris Day movies and things that sort of pop out where you see the frames, where you have these 2D animation moments and split-screens and things like that.
Comics were not something that as a young kid you could say you were into in Manchester, Missouri. Kids did not read comic books back then.
When I was a kid, I was obsessed with different planets in the solar system, and I used to create, for every single planet, a different alien race with a certain kind of pet, a certain kind of house, a certain kind of water system, and everything. I would draw these pictures. I had hundreds of these pictures in a box.
